Our lives are filled with events we react to in different ways, and our reactions are based on the meanings we give them. These meanings form stories we tell ourselves. They become ingrained in our hearts and souls as truth, rooted into our mindsets and presented to the world via our behaviours. They affect the decisions we make and influence the quality of our lives. Can we change our mindsets? Professor David James believes we can, and shows how – by reframing the way we ask questions about life and events – we can change our stories, change our behaviours, and improve the quality of our lives. Watch the video here

Every minute of every day, your body is physically reacting, literally changing, in response to the thoughts that run through your mind.

It’s been shown over and over again that just thinking about something can cause your brain to release neurotransmitters, chemical messengers that allow it to communicate with parts of itself and your nervous system. Neurotransmitters control virtually all of your body’s functions, from hormones to digestion to feeling happy, sad, or stressed.

One thing is clear: boys grow up in a world inhabited by a narrower range of emotions, one in which their experiences of anger are noticed, inferred and potentially even cultivated. This leaves other emotions — particularly the more vulnerable emotions—sorely ignored or missing in their growing minds. This is all the more concerning given that research from Harvard Medical School shows…

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A newborn’s brain contains 100 billion brain cells or neurons. These neurons are highly connected as one of their roles is communication, and amazingly a single cell can connect with as many as 15,000 other neurons. These connections are created through experience and learning and lead to a network which is referred to as the brain’s “wiring”. In the research, it is known that “cells that fire together, wire together”. So cells which repeatedly connect or fire together, will create a stronger, lasting bond and will therefore wire together.

Recently, I was talking to my friend Jo about her life as a 40-something singleton. Her marriage broke up two years ago – since then, she cheerfully admitted, she has become an online dating obsessive: “I’m now signed up to so many apps, I can barely remember which ones I’m on.”

Learning how to cope with adversity is an important part of healthy development. While moderate, short-lived stress responses in the body can promote growth, toxic stress is the strong, unrelieved activation of the body's stress management system in the absence of protective adult support.

Genes provide the basic blueprint, but experiences influence how or whether genes are expressed. Together, they shape the quality of brain architecture and establish either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all of the learning, health, and behavior that follow.